We the Media (Hardcover)

by Dan Gillmor (Author)
Key Phrases: truth squads, grassroots journalism, former audience, Big Media, The New York Times, First Amendment (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
For the first time, bloggers have been awarded press credentials to cover the national political conventions. That‚s a harbinger of bigger changes in the media landscape, according to nationally known columnist Dan Gillmor. His new book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, tells the story of the grassroots journalists–including bloggers–who are dismantling Big Media‚s monopoly on the news. Through Internet-fueled, interactive vehicles like weblogs, these readers-turned-reporters are transforming the news from a lecture to a conversation. They‚re publishing in real time to a worldwide audience that‚s eager to read their independent, unfiltered reports. And the impact of their work is just beginning to be felt by professional journalists and the newsmakers they cover. We the Media sheds light on this deep shift in how we make–and consume–the news.

We the Media is essential reading for all participants in the news cycle:

* Consumers learn how they can become producers of the news. Gillmor lays out the tools of the grassroots journalist‚s trade, including personal Web journals (called weblogs or blogs), Internet chat groups, email, and cell phones. He also illustrates how, in this age of media consolidation and diminished reporting, to „roll your own‰ news, drawing from the array of sources available online and even over the phone.

* Newsmakers–politicians, business executives, celebrities–get a wake-up call. The control that newsmakers enjoyed in the top-down world of Big Media is seriously undermined in the Internet Age. Gillmor shows newsmakers how to successfully play by the new rules and shift from „control‰ to „engagement.‰

* Journalists discover that the new grassroots journalism presents opportunity as well as challenge to their profession. One of the first mainstream journalists to have a blog, Gillmor says, „My readers know more than I do, and that‚s a good thing.‰ In We the Media, he makes the case to his colleagues that, in the face of a plethora of Internet-fueled news vehicles, they must change or become irrelevant.

At its core, We the Media is a book about people. People like Glenn Reynolds, a law professor whose blog postings on the intersection of technology and liberty garnered him enough readers and influence that he became a source for professional journalists. Or Ben Chandler, whose upset Congressional victory was fueled by contributions that came in response to ads on a handful of political blogs. Or Iraqi blogger Zayed, whose Healing Irag blog (healingiraq.blogspot.com) scooped Big Media. Or „acridrabbit,‰ who inspired an online community to become investigative reporters and discover that the dying Kaycee Nichols‚ sad tale was a hoax. Give the people tools to make the news, We the Media asserts, and they will.

Journalism in the 21st century will be fundamentally different from the Big Media that prevails today. We the Media casts light on the future of journalism, and invites us all to be part of it.

About the Author
Dan Gillmor is founder of Grassroots Media Inc., a project aimed at enabling grassroots journalism and expanding its reach. The company's first launch is Bayosphere.com, a site "of, by and for the Bay Area." Gillmor is is author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (O'Reilly Media, 2004), a book that explains the rise of citizens' media and why it matters. From 1994-2004, Gillmor was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper, and wrote a weblog for SiliconValley.com. He joined the Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press. Before that, he was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Vermont, Gillmor received a Herbert Davenport fellowship in 1982 for economics and business reporting at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. During the 1986-87 academic year he was a journalism fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he studied history, political theory and economics. He has won or shared in several regional and national journalism awards. Before becoming a journalist he played music professionally for seven years.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; 1st edition (August 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596007337
• ISBN-13: 978-0596007331
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #233,439 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy to read overview, sensible, read with Trippi's book, October 22, 2004

By	Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

Edited 20 Dec 07 to add links.

Joe Trippi's book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything joins Howard Rheingold's book, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution and Bill Moyer's collaborative book, Doing Democracy as the companions for this book--taken together, the four books provide everything any group needs to "take back the power."

Whereas Trippi provides a personal story that illuminates the new power that comes from combining citizen activism with Internet-enabled networking, this book focuses more on the role the Internet and blogs play in the perception and dissemination of accurate unbiased information. It is not only an elegant presentation, easy to read, with good notes and a fine seven-page listing of cool web sites, but it also provides a useful survey of past writings on this topic--with due credit to Alvin Toffler's first perception of the trend toward mass customization and the elimination of intermediaries, together with original thoughts from the author.

This book could become a standard undergraduate reference on non-standard news sources and the blurring of the lines between producers and consumers of information (or in the government world, of intelligence).

Resistance to change by established media; the incredible emotional and intellectual growth that comes from having a "media" of, by, and for the people that is ***open*** to new facts and context and constantly being ***refreshed***, and the undeniable ability of the people in the aggregate to triumph in their assembled expertise, over niche experts spouting biases funded by specific institutions, all come across early in the book.

The book is provocative, exploring what it means when more and more information is available to the citizen, to include information embedded in foods or objects that communicates, in effect, "if you eat me I will kill you," the author's most memorable turn of phase that really makes the point.

While respecting privacy, the author notes that this may, as David Brin has suggested, be a relic of a pre-technological time. Indeed, I was reminded of the scene in Sho-Gun, where a person had to pause to defecate along the side of the trail, and everyone else simply stood around and did not pay attention--a very old form of privacy that we may be going back to.

Feedster gets some good advertising, and it bears mention that Trippi is still at the Google/email stage, while Gillmor is at the Feedster/RSS/Wiki stage.

Between Trippi and Gillmor, the term "open source politics" can now be said to be established. The line between open source software, open source intelligence or information, and open spectrum can be expected to blur further as public demands for openness and transparency are backed up with the financial power that only an aroused and engaged public can bring to bear.

Gilmor is riveting and 100% on target when he explores the meaning of all this for Homeland Security. He points out that not only is localized observation going to be the critical factor in preventing another 9-11, but that the existing budget and program for homeland security does not provide one iota of attention to the challenge of soliciting information from citizens, and ensuring that the "dots" from citizens get processed and made sense of.

The book slows in the middle with some case studies I could have done without, and then picks up for a strong conclusion by reviewing the basic laws (Moore, Metcalfe, Reed) in order to make the point, as John Gage noted in 2000, that once you have playstations wired for Internet access, and DoKoMo mobile phones that pre-teens can afford, the people ***own*** the world of information.

Spies and others concerned about deception and mischief on the Internet will appreciate the chapter on trolls, spin, and the boundaries of trust. Bottom line: there are public solutions to private misbehavior.

The chapter on lawyers and the grotesque manner in which copyright law is being extended and perverted, allowing a few to steal from our common heritage while hindering innovation (the author's words), should outrage. Lawrence Lessin and Cass Sunstein are still the top minds on this topic, but Gillmore does a fine job of articulating some of the key points.

The book ends on a great note: for the first time in history, a global, continuous feedback loop among a considerable number of the people in possible. This may not overthrow everything, as Trippi suggests, but it most assuredly does ***change*** everything.

I have taken one star away because of really rotten binding--the book, elegant in both substance and presentation, started falling apart in my hands within an hour of my cracking it open.

New books, with reviews, since this was published:
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When we become the medium, October 13, 2004

By	Dimiter Gerensky-Greene "Search engine market... (Arlington, Virginia United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As I was about to write this review, Reuters published the news that: "Iranian authorities have arrested at least six Internet journalists and webloggers in recent days, colleagues and relatives said on Wednesday, in a further blow to limited press freedoms in the Islamic state. News-based Internet sites and online journals known as Weblogs have flourished in Iran where the disproportionately youthful population often turns to the Internet for information and entertainment."

How significant is this? It indicates that the power of internet publishing, today's equivalent of samizdat (which in most slavic languages means self-published), is being recognized not only by those who consume and produce blog-based news, but also by those who fear the power of media when in the hands of the people.

I grew up in a communist country where every typewriter (machine) had to be registered with the police department. A friend of mine from a different town had asked me to buy him a typewriter because in his hometown his name was on a list banning him from owning a typewriter.

Today, everyone can start a Blogger account or install a Movable Type on a web server and start publishing. With this power, of course, comes enormous responsibility.

This book, "We The Media", is a fascinating look on the way the internet self-publishing and blogging phenomenon has changed the way we produce, consume, and share news.

The author is more than respectable--Dan Gillmor, the business and technology columnist from SilliconValley.com. The publisher, O'Reilly, is more than knowledgable on the subject of the convergence of new technologies, business and society. The result is enjoyable, educating, thought-provoking. In my humble, unprofessional opinion, this book fully deserves 5 out of 5 stars!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Charting the rise of citizens media, August 26, 2004

By	J. D. Lasica "open media" (San Francisco Bay Area) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In his new book, Dan Gillmor skillfully chronicles a revolution-in-the-making -- the rise of citizens media, a grassroots-powered phenomenon in which users are becoming both competitors and collaborators with established news organizations.

"We the Media" is certainly the most important journalism book of the year, for it aptly details a gathering storm that is about to sweep away everything we thought we knew about the news.

Gillmor lays out his basic premise with his familiar mantra: My readers know more than I do-and that's an opportunity. He writes: "[R]eaders (or viewers or listeners) collectively know more than media professionals do. This is true by definition: they are many, and we are often just one. We need to recognize and, in the best sense of the word, use their knowledge. If we don't, our former audience will bolt when they realize they don't have to settle for half-baked coverage; they can come into the kitchen themselves."

In a real sense, we're all journalists now. Gillmor passes along approvingly the citizens media credo of Oh Yeon Ho, the reformist founder of South Korea's largest online paper, OhmyNews: "Every citizen's a reporter. Journalists aren't some exotic species, they're everyone who seeks to take new developments, put them into writing, and share them with others."

The author recounts the time a Slashdot reader uncovered the misrepresentation in Microsoft's "Mac to PC" advertising campaign (the photo of the supposed Mac user who switched over to Windows actually came from a Getty Images archive). He capably relates a number of such episodes, such as the scoop scored last spring by the operator of the Memory Hole, who used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the military's photos of the flag-draped caskets of U.S. soldiers-something no news organization thought to do.

Blogs have been slow to take off in the mainstream media in part, Gillmor writes, because of "mistrust among traditional editors of a genre that threatens to undermine what they consider core values-namely editorial control" and "objectivity and fairness."

But he also tempers his embrace of this new world by tamping down any suggestion that blogs will put old media out of business or editors out of a job. "Bloggers who disdain editors entirely, or who say they're largely irrelevant to the process, are mistaken." At the same time, "my readers make me a better journalist because they find my mistakes, tell me what I'm missing, and help me understand nuances."

Despite the news industry's slow, plodding response to all this, Gillmor has come to reform big media, not to bury it. He writes with the passion of someone who desperately wants journalism to find its way in the digital age-and laments what will happen if it does not. "I'm absolutely certain that the journalism industry's modern structure has fostered a dangerous conservatism-from a business sense more than a political sense, though both are apparent-that threatens our future."

Gillmor saves his best admonition for last: "You can make your own news. We all can. Let's get started."